Bye Bye Binky

A few weeks ago Shaun suggested we think about weaning Claire from her beloved binky. At this point she only used it during nap time and bed time. I immediately said, "No way!" I wasn't ready for that transition. Well, a week or two later I discovered Claire had chewed a HUGE hole in her binky. Literally one more chomp and she would've taken the entire tip off. The other concern that we have been dealing with was the pacifier clip would rub against her chin and was leaving this open sore that just couldn't heal. Since I had to face reality and I really didn't want her to choke we decided this week was the week. I read a ton of suggestions on-line about what to do.

Plan A: Cut the tip of it and then suddenly she doesn't want it...

Plan A: FAIL... apparently she was even more attached to just physically having it in her hand than even sucking on it. I had given her a new one with just the little cut and taken away the clip. So when she lost it in the middle of the night she would scream until we found it.

After much prayer and tears I had a plan B

Plan B: Cut off the entire tip and explain to her that it was broken. Most the time she seems to understand things when we chat about it. She put her finger through the hole and then put the tip on top tying to "fix it." and she kept saying, "oh, no." That morning before I revealed the broken binky I felt like we should find her a new "friend." We went to tons of stores and finally (at K-MART of all places) found a friend she was excited about: Monkey. She loves monkeys and doesn't have one so she was really excited about it.

The other impression I had was to make her a new blanket.

 Broken Binky

New Friend

She absolutely LOVES the feel of silky fabric. When I fold laundry she will just hold the silky fabric to her face. So we went to JoAnn fabric and I let her pick out the material she wanted and then got a silky pink for the back. I definitely did a quick job (I think I made it in an hour or so) and gave it to her the next morning. She really likes it and I think it is helping.

Plan B: Success. It has definitely been really challenging this week. She is such a sweet girl it was hard for me to take something so precious away from her. I really felt like I was torturing her. Mom's are supposed to be the ones to fix things not make it worse. But I had to remind myself that this really was in her best interest. I knew she was attached to it but I didn't realize the extent of her love for the binky. So I prayed hard that if she needed comfort angels would be there to help her.

I feel like my prayers were answered in so many ways. She has cried some but not longer than 10 minutes and then would sing songs to herself until she went to sleep. The first day was the hardest with hardly any nap and then her waking up at 3:30 in the morning crying, "Binky broken." That definitely pulled the heart strings.Thankfully she still drinks whole milk pretty good so I could warm some milk up for her and then she would go back to sleep.

Each day has gotten better. she still asks for it sometimes and then she remembers it's broken. I'm so proud of her and thankful she is doing so well. We are not completely out of the woods yet, but considering it has been less than a week we are doing great! Being a mom is tough sometimes!